So, what exactly is a relaxed approach to intermittent fasting? Again, since there’s little research done on intermittent fasting, we’re dealing with a bit of a gray area. The opinions also tend to vary depending on which site you visit, or which health expert you ask. From what we’ve found, the general guidelines to brief intermittent fasting for women are:

If you're looking to lose weight, this isn't a problem. And even if you're happy with your weight, this won't prove to be too much of an issue if you follow the daily fasting or weekly fasting schedules. However, if you're fasting for 24 hours per day on multiple days per week, then it's going to be very difficult to eat enough of your feast days to make up for that.
Now if you're not used to drinking your coffee black, don't despair. There are some no-sugar options that can help lighten and sweeten your morning cup of joe. If you're like me and can't fathom the idea of drinking black coffee, consider adding a few splashes of unsweetened almond or coconut milk. Cutting out the sugar can be especially hard for some people, but there are sugar-free substitutes on the market, such as stevia, erythritol, or xylitol, that can serve as a great alternative. Another modification you can make in your coffee during IF is to consume bulletproof coffee. Simply by adding high-quality grass-fed butter and MCT oil, you may find yourself having a much easier time abstaining from food.

No cravings. Fat doesn’t spike your blood sugar levels. In fact, a keto diet is so effective at stabilizing blood sugar that it got type II diabetics off their medication entirely, according to a recent study.[15] If you pair a keto diet with fasting, your blood sugar will stay stable and low (but not too low) all day. Say goodbye to the cravings, fatigue, and mood swings that make high-carb fasting so difficult.

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Harvard-trained physician and author of The Paleovedic Diet, Dr. Akil Palanisamy further explains to POPSUGAR that "autophagy is the self-cleaning process by which the body's cells break down and recycle damaged proteins and components. This is activated by intermittent fasting, but anything other than water (even black coffee) disrupts it to some extent."
The problem is that we tend to spend so much time in the fed state, fueling our bodies exclusively with glucose, that we become addicted. Once the flow of glucose stops and our insulin levels drop, we start getting hunger pains. This is one of the reasons that overweight individuals — people with more than adequate energy stores in their fat cells — often have such a difficult time cutting back on food intake. They’re not starving, but they’re not getting the glucose their bodies are used to.
None of the coffee additives caused a significant drop in our blood ketone levels. At 120 minutes, my, (Becky’s), ketone readings increased after drinking black coffee, coffee with cream, coffee with MCT oil, and coffee with butter. At 120 minutes, Keith’s ketone readings dropped by 0.1 mmol/L after drinking only black coffee. His ketone readings rose slightly after consuming coffee with cream, MCT oil, and butter.

Intermittent fasting, commonly referred to as IF, has become all the rage lately, and it doesn't look like the trend is going away anytime soon. The practice of intermittent fasting, or time-restricted feeding, is when a person limits the period of time in which they consume calories down to a limited number of hours. So for example, I practice IF with an eight-hour eating window, which means that I will only eat between the hours of 12 p.m. and 8 p.m.

There are MUCH bigger fish to fry with regards to getting healthy than a few calories here and there during a fast. 80% adherence that you stick with for a year is better than 100% adherence that you abandon after a month because it was too restrictive. If you’re trying to get to a minimum bodyfat percentage, you’ll need to be more strict – until then, however, do what allows you to stay compliant!
Initial human studies that compared fasting every other day to eating less every day showed that both worked about equally for weight loss, though people struggled with the fasting days. So I had written off IF as no better or worse than simply eating less, only far more uncomfortable. My advice was to just stick with the sensible, plant-based, Mediterranean-style diet.
You’ll run out of energy. When you don’t have anything in your system for several hours, your blood sugar will eventually drop below baseline. If you’ve ever had a blood sugar crash, you know how this state feels. Sleepiness, trouble focusing, lightheadedness, intense cravings, and the occasional mood swing typically accompany low blood sugar. Your cells run low on fuel and they start demanding that you give them more carbs.[13]
Intermittent fasting (specifically the 5:2 diet) became popular in the UK in 2012[14][15][16] after the BBC2 television Horizon documentary Eat, Fast and Live Longer.[17] Via sales of best-selling books, it became widely practiced.[18][19] In the United States, intermittent fasting has become a trend among Silicon Valley companies.[20] According to NHS Choices as of 2012, people considering the 5:2 diet should first consult a physician, as fasting can sometimes be unsafe.[18][21] A news item in the Canadian Medical Association Journal expressed concern that promotional material for the diet showed people eating high-calorie food, such as hamburgers and chips, and that this could encourage binge eating since the implication was that "if you fast two days a week, you can devour as much junk as your gullet can swallow during the remaining five days".[22]
Another program called the 5:2 Fast Diet involves eating 5 days a week and fasting for the other 2 days, when women can get no more than 500 calories and men no more than 600. That’s a quarter of the amount you likely eat on the days when you don’t fast. Whether you eat those calories in one sitting or spread them across micro-meals throughout the day is up to you.